Thursday, October 1, 2026
Long Beach is about to embark on the most ambitious environmental projects in the city in a generation — redirecting about 5 million gallons of effluent per day from Reynolds Channel, where it has been pumped for decades, into the Atlantic Ocean, with the help of state and federal contracts totaling $99 million.
The project is something Long Beach residents have called for at public meetings for years.
Joe Febrizio, the city’s commissioner of public works, said earlier this week that he had been notified a week ago that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would provide Long Beach with $74 million in hazard mitigation funding. In addition, Febrizio said, New York state had previously agreed to provide the city with $25 million for the same purpose.
Febrizio said that plans call for Long Beach’s 1950s-era sewage treatment plant, at National Boulevard and Pine Street, to be converted into a pumping station. Waste will be pumped about a mile under Reynolds Channel to the Bay Park Water Reclamation Facility in East Rockaway. That plant is being upgraded to filter out nitrogen.
Currently, about 5 million gallons of waste are pumped into Reynolds Channel from Long Beach every day.
From Bay Park, Febrizio said, the wastewater will be pumped through a pipe under Sunrise Highway to the Cedar Creek Water Pollution Control Plant in Wantagh. From there it will be directed out into the ocean. The routing from Bay Park is a separate $500 million project, under the jurisdiction of the Nassau County Department of Public Works, which is currently underway.
“I would say that … this is the largest environmental project we will see in our lifetime in Long Beach," Febrizio said.
He added that bids on the project would go out in the next two months. Work is expected to begin next winter, and the Long Beach part of the project is expected to be finished in mid-2025.
City Councilwoman Liz Treston said the plan is a plus for the city, Nassau County and Long Island. “It’s going to help the wildlife in the bay, too,” Treston said. “We’ve got marine life coming back. It’s going to improve everything.”
In a letter submitted Monday to Long Beach City Manager Donna Gayden and members of the City Council, Adrienne Esposito, executive director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, wrote that her organization, along with Operation SPLASH, the Nature Conservancy and Long Beach’s Environmental Advisory Board, all favor the project.
“We are extremely encouraged by the progress of the Bay Park Conveyance Project,” the letter read, referring to the work on transferring wastewater from the Bay Park plant to the Cedar Creek plant. “The next critical step to restoring the bay is to ensure the City of Long Beach’s Sewage Treatment Plant is converted to a pump station, which will transport the effluent ”
The letter went on to say that Long Beach’s sewage treatment plant “continues to fail to achieve the minimum water quality standards” of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
“Our immediate concern is Reynolds Channel,” Frank McQuade, a member of Long Beach’s environment advisory council, said. “As a Long Beach resident, I’m delighted this is happening.”
